1 hour ago
10
Tale of the tape
Here’s how Itauma and Hrgović measure up ahead of tonight’s main event. Itauma is the younger man by 13 years and gives away an inch and a half in height and three inches in reach, but he will enter the ring as the heavier fighter. The 21-year-old tipped the scales at 241.7lb, compared with 232.6lb for Hrgovic. The Croatian brings a significant edge in professional experience, having boxed 105 rounds to Itauma’s 31.
Key events
Frank Warren has just made some news from the ring at the O2. Daniel Dubois and Fabio Wardley will meet again for the WBO heavyweight title at the same venue on 17 October.
Wardley has exercised his rematch clause after their bloody first encounter in Manchester, when he floored Dubois twice in the opening round before Dubois took control and ultimately won. The roles will be reversed this time: Dubois enters as champion, Wardley as challenger.
Sam Noakes has scored the biggest win of his career, outclassing former world champion Denys Berinchyk to win a 10-round unanimous decision. The 29-year-old from Kent controlled the fight throughout, winning by scores of 100-90, 99-91 and 98-92.
That’s it for the undercard at the O2. The final countdown to Moses Itauma v Filip Hrgović is on.
Elsewhere in England, Caroline Dubois has retained her WBC and WBO lightweight titles with a unanimous-decision win over Amelia Moore in Birmingham. Dubois dropped Moore in the fifth round before the challenger rallied to make the fight more competitive than the 99-90, 99-90 and 98-91 scorecards suggested.
Afterwards, Dubois became embroiled in a heated exchange with Alycia Baumgardner, the WBA, WBO and IBF champion at 130lb, adding the latest chapter to the simmering war of words between the promotional stablemates that has been building for the past year.
There was no shortage of needle at Friday’s weigh-in, where the bad blood that has simmered throughout fight week finally boiled over. After an expletive-laden face-off at Spitalfields Market, Itauma shoved Hrgović off the stage, sending the Croatian stumbling backwards. Hrgovic quickly climbed back up and struck Itauma in the face before security separated them.
“I just lost it a little bit,” Itauma admitted afterwards, later adding: “I had a little itch, and I just had to scratch it.” The flashpoint followed days of Hrgović provoking the 21-year-old, repeatedly calling him a “kid” and “delusional” and promising to “send him back to high school”.
There is a gnawing contradiction at the heart of Saturday’s promotion. Itauma is being put forth as boxing’s next big star, with the chance to become the youngest world heavyweight champion since Mike Tyson nearly 40 years ago.
Yet in the US, Itauma v Hrgović costs $59.99 on Dazn PPV, while UK viewers must fork over £24.99 and Australians A$39.99. Those prices are on top of a standard Dazn subscription, although the fight is included for subscribers to the more expensive Ultimate tier. This is not an unfamiliar arrangement in modern boxing, but it is a strange way to build an audience around a 21-year-old fighter who is supposed to help carry the sport into its next era.
If boxing wants Itauma to become a mainstream attraction, surely the priority should be getting him in front of as many eyeballs as possible. Instead, potential new fans are being asked to clear multiple financial barriers simply to watch him fight.
The Canadian journalist Ariel Helwani was rather less diplomatic about it this week.
“Putting a fight like Moses Itauma v Filip Hrgovic this weekend behind the pay-per-view wall is actually criminal,” Helwani said. “That is truly criminal. What are you doing? Enough already. Stop putting these fights behind multiple paywalls. They did it last weekend too with the López-Romero fight. You want people to fall in love with these fighters? You got to make them accessible.”
Correction: there’s one more preliminary fight before Noakes v Berinchyk. And it was a quick one. Nelson Hysa, aka the Albanian Eagle, just made quick work of the badly overmatched Thomas Narmo, scoring a brutal technical knockout early in the second round.
Donald McRae
The arena looks pretty close to full which is a positive surprise. There was speculation earlier in the week that ticket sales had been a little sluggish and when I arrived just before seven this evening they were still selling seats to people who had just walked up to the 02. This is only Moses Itauma’s 15th fight and, while his face has been plastered across London’s buses the past few weeks, he is still a 21-year-old fighter who is at the start of his ascent to elite-level boxing.
This could be the fight, against a tough and ambitious Filip Hrgović, which could mark the big breakthrough for Itauma. At the same time there is a risk that the callow prodigy might be exposed. I reckon that Itauma will be too good for Hrgović, but the atmosphere is building and there is a nice little frisson of uncertainty in the air.
Tale of the tape
Here’s how Itauma and Hrgović measure up ahead of tonight’s main event. Itauma is the younger man by 13 years and gives away an inch and a half in height and three inches in reach, but he will enter the ring as the heavier fighter. The 21-year-old tipped the scales at 241.7lb, compared with 232.6lb for Hrgovic. The Croatian brings a significant edge in professional experience, having boxed 105 rounds to Itauma’s 31.
Here’s where things stand in the order of play. Constantin Ursu has just retained his British and Commonwealth welterweight titles with an eighth-round stoppage of Ben Vaughan. The unbeaten champion was pushed hard by a game Vaughan before a severe cut over his right eyebrow brought the contest to a premature end at the O2. Ursu improves to 16-0 (7 KOs) with the TKO win.
That leaves one more undercard fight before tonight’s main event: a scheduled 12-round lightweight scrap between Sam Noakes and Denys Berinchyk.
Preamble
Hello and welcome to London’s O2 Arena, where we are counting down to one of the more intriguing heavyweight attractions of the year and, just maybe, the launch of a new era in boxing’s bellwether division.
Moses Itauma is only 21 years old, unbeaten in 14 paying fights and already being spoken about in the sort of glowing terms normally reserved for fighters who have spent years at or near the top of the division. Tonight the prodigiously gifted southpaw from Chatham can become the second-youngest heavyweight champion in history, behind only Mike Tyson, when he faces Filip Hrgović for the vacant International Boxing Federation title at the O2 Arena.
The hype is not difficult to understand. Itauma has speed uncommon for a man his size, concussive power and an ability to attack from angles that Barry Jones believes separates him from almost every other heavyweight. But for everything we have seen, there is plenty we haven’t. Itauma has boxed only 31 professional rounds. He has never been dragged into the deep waters of a difficult fight, where Andy Lee believes the questions surrounding him become less technical than psychological.
That is where Hrgović comes in. The 34-year-old Croatian has been a professional for nine years and lost only once (to Daniel Dubois in 2024). He has spent the buildup dismissing Itauma as a “delusional kid”, even suggesting that becoming champion so young could “ruin his soul”. It’s an idea Itauma has not entirely dismissed. He has spoken candidly this week about the burden of sudden fame and his desire to “start off like Mike Tyson started, but not end up how Mike Tyson ended”.
It should be mentioned the widely recognized king of the division is still Oleksandr Usyk, the unbeaten former undisputed heavyweight champion from Ukraine who relinquished his remaining world title belts in June but insists he has not retired. But with the old order beginning to clear, Itauma is ideally placed to collect the spoils and establish himself as the leading candidate to inherit Usyk’s throne when the time comes.
We’ll have round-by-round updates, key moments and instant reaction in this space. Stay with us.
Bryan will be here shortly. In the meantime here’s Donald McRae’s lookahead to tonight’s fight.
